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(from scrapbook 1, pages 62-63)

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BACK ON THE ROAD

STATUS QUO, who spent 92 years taking their waistcoats and song round the globe before calling it a day two years ago, have since decided enough was not quite enough. So, with the aid of two new members and some Grecian 2000, they've returned. PAUL ELLIOTT gets down down, GREG FREEMAN goes blue for you

ALMOST EVERYONE has a little place in their heart for the Quo, Britain's best loved hard rock band ever.

'Down Down', 'Rockin' All Over The World', 'Wild Side Of Life'... they weren't just any old blistered 12-bar boogie blasts. At least, they didn't seem to be. They were a part of the '70s, a bristled, scruffy reaction to the gauche sophistication elsewhere.

It was somehow important that Quo got in there and greased up the charts, hits flowing with a frequency matched only by that with which those lived-in chords reared their tousled little heads.

If you've never rocked a leg or nodded a head to a Quo song, then obviously you were never 14, never pissed, never at a rock gig.

We're all a little older now, though. Quo are too - and, in all honesty, they sound it.

'Rollin' Home', their first single release for nigh on two years (a spit in the ocean within the context of their 24 year history) is a pleasant ramble through familiar boogie country, but it's also proof enough that Quo's days as the inspiration for future hard rockin' favourites (like the young Iron Maiden before) are long since past.

It's a record that smacks heavily of 'has-been' antiquity in a rock climate inflamed by a welter of vicious death metal hellhags. However, Rick Parfitt and Francis Rossi, ever-present mainmen, are happy enough with it, as they are with the re-shuffled band line-up which chalks up its debut on the single.

Beside the old guitar pairing remains skeletal Andy Bown on keyboards, with ex-Climax Blues Band bassist John Edwards and drummer Jeff Rich filling in for the departed Alan 'Sore Subject' Lancaster and Pete Kircher.

On a rainwashed afternoon south of the Thames, the Parfitt & Rossi show, mugs of tea in hand, look forward once again to the long and winding road. Does 'Rollin' Home' mark the return to their gruelling album/tour routine of yore?

Francis: "To a point, yeah. Hopefully, by the autumn we'll be out on a proper tour in Britain."

You'll be taking it at an easier pace, though, right?

"Only a little. We can only do four nights before me voice goes. At least some people lose a good voice, I just lose mine... "

Isn't the prospect of a lengthy tour a daunting one?

Rick: "No, I'm excited about it. I don't know whether it's gonna be a mammoth tour like we've undertaken in the past. Y'see, a three-hour set for 90 to 100 gigs is just too much."

Was there any question of you laying the Quo name to rest?

"Nobody would know who we were, would they?"

Francis: "The point is, since '76 or '77, Richard and I have been doing most of the promo work, we've basically been the front people as such, and to knock that on the head would be stupid. You could have been sitting here saying, What the bloody hell did you drop the name for?

"And in the end, people would've referred to it as Quo at some time or another..."

Rick: "We've worked hard to make Status Quo the name that it is, so there's no point in dropping it, just like there's no point, being Quo, in just sitting around doing sweet FA.

"We stopped touring planning to make records and bits 'n' pieces, but after two years off the road you get up every morning and think, What the bloody 'ell am I gonna do today, y'know? You write a few songs but there's no real satisfaction in it and life becomes very grey. So, we had a natter and decided to get back on the road again...

"Coupled with Live Aid," adds Francis, "which really pumped the adrenalin back into us."

Rick: "The reaction at Live Aid was unbelievable, so we thought, Let's get out and do something."

Francis: "An' it don't 'alf 'urt. Blimey, it 'urts."

Rick: "And when we came to start recording the album, it was so much more interesting than before."

The album? What'll it be called?

"A long player..."

A RETURN TO old ways after a two year break and a rethink. It'll look in many critics' eyes as if Quo are hard up - either for ideas or money.

"What can we say?" Francis shrugs.

Rick: "They could say that, but the tax bill doesn't pay itself, does it? And we're certainly not hard up for ideas. Again, having had the two years off, there's a rejuvenated feeling about us two, and the injection of the two new members has put so much more life into the band.

"We've got to work hard again, we're not safe or sure of selling out, whereas before we'd got a bit complacent about the whole thing."

Talking of complacency, isn't there a danger of you getting blasé when you're able to feed people with 'last tour' promises and then have them lapping up more gigs, more records etc, a couple of years on?

Francis: "No, 'cause as far as I was concerned, it was the last tour. I didn't think I'd change my mind but we all have a right to do so.

"I still wasn't particularly keen, even after Live Aid, to go back on the road with the band as it was, 'cause within a week we would've ended up with that same blasé feeling. One thing I personally used to hate, m the late '60s and early '70s, was the way people would split up and reforrn just to sell tickets. We've never needed to do that."

Rick: "I tell you what, I honestly believe if we'd got this line-up together and it wasn't good then we wouldn't go with it. The fact is that this line-up is shit hot, it seriously is. You ain't seen it yet, but when you do you'll know what I'm talking about. It is seriously good."

STATUS QUO'S 'End Of The Road' tour created an overwhelming demand for tickets throughout the country. As a punter, I too paid (I think) £7.50 for the privilege of witnessing one of a week's worth of 'final' Hammersmith Odeon shows.

I was left disappointed by an overlong performance, but that's neither here nor there. The point is that there were many thousands like me who dug deep for a slice of nostalgia. Whether you enjoyed the gigs or not, you could at least fall back on the satisfaction that you'd been there as that revered rock 'n' roll institution sweated it out for (near enough) the last time. That was 1984.

This July Quo play four outdoor shows with Queen, and there's an autumn tour to follow. They've decided to go a bit further on up the road. Clearly, Milton Keynes wasn't Quo's Last Stand.

(missing)...was aggro in the band, and I think this break has done us a world of good."

Rick: "We've come back fresh, we've got new ideas."

Francis helpfully clears up the details of a recent European jaunt.

"We did eleven shows, some in Dhabi, some in Abu, some in Grecos, some behind the Iron Curt-ron..."

Rick: "If you'd have seen the equipment we played on in Athens you wouldn't have believed it. The Marshalls were out of the ark."

Francis: "Talk about mark ones... All of that's good for us, though. It's like discipline, as opposed to being so comfortable before."

Rick: "The stage in Abu Dhabi was about 25 feet up. It was on a beach."

Francis: "They'd had somebody in there about a week before, they'd got the stage set up, and then the f****** tide came in. There was water all around 'em and they couldn't get off.

SO WHAT have the Quo been doing since that last tour? Charity football matches, that sort of thing?

Francis: "Oh, funny bollocks!"

Rick: "Football matches, heh, heh, heh."

Francis: "Well, we'd done Live Aid and Band Aid, and we'd had high hopes for some solo stuff which so far hasn't been released."

Rick: "I wanted to get on the road again long before Francis. After only six or seven months I was getting pretty pissed off."

How many more ends of the road can there be?

"There'll be one more."

Francis: "If you asked me how long we're gonna go on for, I'd say probably about another five years."

So on reflection, wasn't the last tour an empty gesture?

"No. It finished a certain phase for us."

It must be strange for you to go back to supporting...

"Well, it's not really supporting. That's the bit that hurts, and that's why you said it. They call it 'Special Guest'. It'll be great for us to do it...

Image caption: PARFITT & ROSSI: one more for the road